Archives For SMEs

By Martin Brassell, co-author of Banking on IP and Inngot CEO, on the new financial reporting standard and its implications for intangible assets

The new Financial Reporting Standard 102 (‘FRS 102’) comes into effect from the end of 2015 (where a company’s accounting year is the calendar year) and April 2016 (where it is the fiscal year). It changes the treatment of intangible assets for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who will now follow substantially the same rules as multinationals.

It’s therefore a good time to brush up on the identification and valuation of this category of assets, which is responsible for driving the majority of value in most companies. The main changes fall under two headings.

Buying or ‘merging’ companies

Currently, when two companies are combined, either merger accounting (adding the two existing balance-sheets together) or acquisition accounting (placing a fair value on all acquired company’s assets) might be permissible. FRS 102 states acquisition accounting must be used in nearly all cases (bar group reorganisations).

Also, acquisition accounting rules are being updated. Any excess paid over and above the fair value of the fixed assets and liabilities can no longer simply be characterised as ‘goodwill’. Instead, it needs to be broken down into goodwill and identifiable intangible assets, in a very similar manner to IFRS 3 (with some minor wording differences).

This means that the sources of intangible value that have never previously appeared on an acquired company’s balance-sheet will need to be identified and quantified.

The useful life of intangible assets and goodwill

FRS 102 preserves the option, previously available under SSAP 13 (which it replaces), of either amortising qualifying development costs of new products and services over a suitable period, or expensing these costs during the year in which they are incurred.

However, UK GAAP currently permits ‘goodwill’ to have an indefinite life, as long as the value is tested annually for impairment. Under FRS 102, the concept of an indefinite life falls away and a lifespan has to be specified for amortisation purposes.

If an asset’s lifespan cannot be determined reliably, a ‘default’ figure of five years must be used. This is much shorter than existing UK GAAP, under which it would have been customary to amortise some assets over a much longer period (up to 20 years).

Combine these changes with the reduced role of ‘hard’ assets, which are increasingly outstripped by spending on intangibles, and the number of businesses looking to reflect their real investment profile on their balance-sheet looks set to rise.

ACCA is currently running a UK pilot of the National Corporate Innovation Index methodology, which looks at the value created by intangible asset investment across a range of categories. ACCA members engaged with SMEs can participate and obtain a report for their client company by emailing rosalind.goates@accaglobal.com. Interest in participation needs to be expressed by 28 August 2015.

Improving trade will be vitally important to growing the UK in the coming decade. Indeed, boosting exports must be a national mission. The current Government has also recognised that and have set an ambitious target to increase exports to £1 trillion by 2020. However, there are concerns that the pace at which exports are expanding isn’t fast enough.

The headline news from the Office for National Statistics is that the monthly trade deficit in February narrowed, down to £2.1bn from the £2.2bn in January. The value of goods exports was the lowest since October 2010, while the goods deficit excluding oil and items such as precious stones and aircraft – widened from £8bn to £8.5bn.

For these statistics to improve, Labour believe that Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses will be crucial to driving our exports and we are looking at ways we can support them to do that.

Ensuring that firms have access to the finance they need to export is a crucial. That is why the Government’s two flagship export schemes – the £5bn Export Refinancing Scheme and the £1.5bn Direct Lending Scheme – need to start lending and I would encourage ministers to look urgently at the performance of these schemes.

The UK needs to get more businesses exporting to boost middle-income jobs and grow our way out of the cost-of-living crisis and so we can ensure Britain can compete in growing global markets. We have fantastic, innovative businesses, and many important advantages on which to build up our exports. We have a strong British brand, our language, our legal system, and even our time-zone work in our favour. We should be drawing on the rich cultural tapestry of Britain, building on the links with our Disapora communities to strengthen trade links with emerging markets, and building city-to-city links as Chuka Umunna the Shadow Business Secretary outlined last week. To grasp the opportunities and exploit our full potential needs a Government that is prepared to act and prepared to support.

If this does not happen we will not only miss being ahead of the game and fail to grasp the opportunities with regard to exports to the BRIC economies, the ship will sail on the new wave of fast growing economies – the Next Eleven, including the recently much publicised MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) countries. Ministers must do much more than offer warm words.

As April’s Western Union International Trade Monitor has shown, only 9% of SMEs have customers in China compared to 15% a year ago, whilst only 6% sell to India (vs. 14% in Q1 2013). Indeed, the percentage of SMEs planning to expand into emerging markets fell from 36% in Q4 2013 to 28%. That’s not good enough. These are exactly the markets that UK businesses should be breaking into, but they can only do this with the support of an active government which utilises its export guarantees, a future Labour Government would be as active as possible.

The next Labour government will make it a central mission to boost exports, innovation and investment as part of Agenda 2030, which is our plan for better-balanced, sustainable growth. This means engaging with our European partners using our membership of the EU to reform it and to help us as we look to boost our exports in new markets overseas and help more small firms export. The UK mustn’t head for the EU exit door, an approach which would do nothing for jobs and the ability of smaller and medium sized businesses to export.

Our Small Business Taskforce has made a number of recommendations to Labour which we are examining. These include creating export hubs in major world cities to give UK firms a foothold; export “rainmakers” who can help small businesses identify and approach potential customers; and a suite of export finance products comparable to those offered by the US Small Business Administration.

As a former small business owner, I know the importance of having a government which supports business and steps up not steps away. We have businesses across the country that have huge ambition. It needs to be matched with a government prepared to act.

Membership of the European Union has been an issue the accountancy profession has made little noise about and it’s viewed as a political issue. However, EU membership is an economic matter which is why here at ACCA we feel an obligation to take a view on membership.

The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg MP described leaving the EU as “economic suicide.” He is right. But why do we care? Because accountants, perhaps now more than ever as we emerge from a global recession, have an important role to play in the recovery, future growth and in guarding against future risk to the UK’s economy.

Accountants traditionally look at the numbers, and they paint a convincing picture of why the UK should not back out of the EU. However, the profession is seeing its role and remit broadening into a much more strategic, forward-looking role in business and from that perspective too, giving up on the economic European Union would be bad news for UK plc.

ACCA sees staying in Europe as a no-brainer, and we aren’t alone. Nissan’s chief operating officer Toshiyuki Shiga has pointed to the major benefits for foreign investors in the UK being part of the EU. As Nissan owns the biggest car factory in Sunderland, employing 6,100 people, and is supported by UK supply chains that employ even more, Shiga’s comments should not be ignored.

Leaving the EU is also bad for the smaller businesses further down the supply chain. SMEs would actually benefit greatly from an even more integrated European Union. SMEs could increase export trade by 45 per cent if the remaining barriers in the Union are lifted.

But this issue isn’t just about trade. It’s about people.

Chief finance officers tell us that overseas experience will be a vital skill for tomorrow’s finance leaders. That sentiment fits with ACCA’s qualification – an exportable asset. You can study it in the UK and take the qualification to the Czech Republic or other markets (and vice-versa). In the EU, that mobility is made easier by free movement of people laws.

The UK benefits from being able to access talent from across Europe – employees bring with them market knowledge and close links with clients, customers and other stakeholders. This cultural connection is vital in a global business world.

The EU is also a vehicle for social mobility. ACCA is guilty of repeating the same messages around social mobility, but can you blame us? Since our infancy in 1904, social mobility has been the central principle of our qualification. Who you are and where you come from is no obstacle to the ACCA Qualification. That social mobility principle also applies in the EU.

Social mobility can include upward progression across Europe in finance and beyond, as well as within the UK? Cutting that continental option off and confining social mobility to within the UK’s shores is strangling that upward mobility.

This isn’t just about the current workforce either. Opportunities for Britain’s younger generation won’t be there if major employers have to leave the UK. Where will they get work – Europe? That won’t be so easy if the UK throws in the towel with the Union.

And if jobs and social mobility aren’t concerns for some, perhaps the numbers – more familiar territory for the accountancy profession – can paint a more convincing picture as to why a UK out of Europe is a bleak place.

The EU is the largest economy in world, worth £11 trillion, ahead of the US (£10.3 trillion) and China (£5.4 trillion). Nearly 34 per cent of world trade originates in Europe, worth around £3.5 trillion annually. The EU is also the top trading partner for 80 countries.

UK companies benefit by £500m a year, while 50 per cent of foreign direct investment to the UK comes from other EU member states. Over 40 per cent of UK exports go to the EU and they are tariff-free. More than 300,000 UK companies operate in the EU.

Amidst the emotional scaremongering about the EU’s threat to British culture, the figures paint a clear picture that big business, overseas investors, small business and UK employment stand to lose if we drop out of the EU.

It’s difficult to ignore the arguments for staying in Europe. The consequences of leaving will hit the UK hard.

SMEs are increasingly going online for something they are not getting from the banks: finance.

Online crowdfunding platforms, which allow businesses to pitch directly to investors, are emerging as a smarter way for SMEs to get the finance they need. Lenders looking for a better rate of interest are ready to compete to fund the most credit-worthy ideas. This means that businesses are more likely to succeed in getting a loan via a crowdfunding platform – and at a more favourable rate.

Lending to SMEs has been falling since the financial crisis. Bank of England statistics show that lending has been down approximately 3% each month compared to 2012. As banks struggle to do enough to finance UK SMEs, many have found an alternative source of finance in crowdfunding.

Next year, the appeal of crowdfunding will only increase. In April, the FCA will begin to regulate crowdfunding businesses, providing protections to both lenders and borrowers. Under the key proposals for loan-based crowdfunding platforms, platforms will have to ensure among other things that they talk clearly and accurately about the potential risks and rewards. The regulator will also keep a close eye on the kind of back-up plans the platforms have in place to ensure lenders are protected.

Crowdfunding can provide lenders and borrowers with more control, as well as acting to undermine the restrictive dominance of high street banks. As the economy begins to grow again, crowdfunding can inject further confidence in growth with the necessary funding.

It has always been the case that the first step for any entrepreneur wanting to set up in business is to work out what structure would be most appropriate for their business.

For many people, the choice of business form will seem fairly straightforward. If you want to protect your privacy and retain complete control of your business, and are prepared to be financially responsible for its debts, you will probably choose to operate as a sole trader or with trusted colleagues in a partnership. If on the other hand you value the protection of limited liability status you will opt to become a limited company. These two fundamental forms have each existed for well over a century and remain hugely popular.

But it is no longer true to say that the choice of form available to new entrepreneurs is quite as black and white as the above would suggest.

Recent years have in fact seen a significant expansion of the diversity of business forms available to new and existing businesses. Here are a few examples of this movement:

The limited liability partnership (LLP) was introduced in 2000. The LLP is a hybrid form, half-way between a partnership and a company. It has the hallmarks of the traditional partnership in that its partners are free to arrange the firm’s internal affairs more or less as they see fit, but it resembles a company in that it is a corporate body and is required to prepare and publish annual accounts. The LLP is available to any type of business but is especially attractive to professional firms that wish to take advantage of protection from personal liability for their individual members.

The community interest company (CIC) is a company structure which is expressly intended to be appropriate for enterprises with social or community benefit in mind, rather than purely for the financial advantage of its proprietors. To achieve this the format requires profits made by the company to be ‘locked in’ so as to be channelled towards furthering its corporate aims.

Public service mutuals are a new vehicle designed to deliver functions hitherto delivered solely by the public sector. The UK Government is actively encouraging the take up of mutuals as a means of cutting central government costs and has raised the prospect of 1 million public sector workers being transferred to mutual by 2015.

A new report by Tomorrow’s Company, contributed to by ACCA, reviews the new landscape of UK business forms and urges entrepreneurs, advisers and governments to consider the opportunities that are afforded by this expansion of choice.

What choice means is that, for the entrepreneur, it need no longer be a straight choice between partnership and company – depending on the motives of the person starting up the business, one can now contemplate becoming a social enterprise or a charitable incorporated organisation as well as a sole trader and a company limited by shares or guarantee.

From the perspective of government, the report argues that more attention needs to be paid to business form when considering its dealings with private sector businesses and the issuing of contracts to them. It poses the question of whether companies with overtly commercial business and funding models are the right sort of entity to be delivering public services, referring, as an example, to the recent case history of care homes being taken over by listed companies which have aggressive funding models.

And for advisers, such as practising accountants, it means that there is a much wider range of information that they can provide to clients wishing either to set up in business from scratch or to review their existing structure or form.

What this all means is that businesspeople today have more options as regards the structure of their firm and more freedom to organise the way they organise their business so as to align it with the expectations of their consumers and stakeholders. The report makes for interesting reading by any one who has ever felt constrained by the choices available to them.